Mayor of Cheltenham. Lib Dem county councillor for Leckhampton & Warden Hill, borough councillor for Leckhampton & parish councillor for Leckhampton Undercliff. Former Cheltenham MP & former MEP
Last Thursday you re-elected my brilliant teammate on the borough council, Julia Chandler, as the second borough councillor for Leckhampton. Julia topped the poll with 1,274 votes. The Conservatives were second, Reform UK third and the Green Party fourth.
Across Cheltenham, the Lib Dems won 18 out of the 21 seats up for election on the night – 17 on the borough council and one county council by-election.
And in Leckhampton you also voted overwhelmingly to adopt the local Neighbourhood Plan.
Thank you so much for this fantastic vote of confidence.
Julia and I promise to keep working for Leckhampton, working to defend and enhance the local environment, speak up for Leckhampton in local council chambers and take up cases when you need us to. We’ll keep attending the Leckhampton Community Café at the DugOut Café in Burrow’s Field every third Saturday of the month from 10 til 1200. And we’ll keep putting out our regular FOCUS newsletters all year round to keep you informed about the decisions being taken about your community. FOCUS is paid for and delivered entirely by Lib Dem volunteers so if you’d like to help, we’d really appreciate it. Click here to help us!
Thursday 7 May is polling day in Leckhampton and you have TWO votes this time!!
One vote is for one of Leckhampton’s two borough council seats and popular sitting Lib Dem councillor Julia Chandler is the best placed candidate to beat Nigel Farage’s Reform Party here. Julia lives locally and is a hardworking former community midwife for Leckhampton. She has represented Leckhampton alongside me since 2024 and I couldn’t wish for a better teammate on the council.
Leckhampton has traditionally always been a close race between the Conservatives and Lib Dems, with one recent election being decided by just 13 votes! But last May Nigel Farage’s Reform Party overtook the Green Party to come third in Leckhampton & Warden Hill and became the main opposition party to the Lib Dems across Gloucestershire. So the chances are this will be a close contest between the Lib Dems and Reform.
Your second vote is for Leckhampton’s Neighbourhood Plan. Please vote YES! This is the culmination of many years’ work and local consultation by parish councillors and will influence planning decisions taken by the borough council and other planning decision-makers. It adds some protection to more local green spaces, community facilities and local heritage and sets out the preferred cycling and walking routes we want to see improved. And adopting it will even bring a higher rate of developer contribution too so that will mean more money for local projects.
The polls are open from 7am until 10pm and you now must take a Photo ID to vote. The location of your polling station is on the official poll card you’ve received from the council – please check as some Leckhampton polling stations have changed in recent years. Phone us on 01242 224889 if you want to double-check where to vote or need a lift to the polling station. You don’t have to take the poll card to vote but it’s helpful for council officers if you do. If you’ve had a postal vote but haven’t posted it, it’s too late to post but you can seal it in the envelopes according to the instructions but take it to any polling station or the Municipal Offices in the Promenade.
We’re expecting the result on Friday. Good luck Julia!
On Thursday 1 May, local people elected me as your new county councillor for the Leckhampton and Warden Hill Division. Thank you to everyone who voted for me. I will strive to represent everyone locally regardless of who you voted for.
I’d like to thank my predecessor Emma Nelson for her service to the area. Although we are from different parties and obviously took a different view of the county council’s past record, I recognise the affection in which Emma is held locally and her hard work on our behalf. I’m pleased that in these divisive times we both fought respectful election campaigns.
Although local government reorganisation looms over the county council as it does over other local councils, at the moment Gloucestershire County Council takes the lion’s share of our council tax and is responsible for major budgets like transport, roads and pavements, adult social care and children’s services as well as many other smaller but important services like waste disposal and libraries. It is very likely that with 27 out of 55 seats across the county the Liberal Democrats will now form the county administration and we take seriously our pledges to address many of the issues raised during the election campaign. These include the quality of our roads and pavements, the need to improve children’s services, commit the county ever more clearly to environmental sustainability and tackle waste.
Martin with Warden Hill Lib Dem borough councillors Tony and Graham
This Thursday 1 May, from 7am to 10pm, the polls are open in the county council election (find your polling station on the polling card you’ve been sent or online here and remember you now need a Photo ID to vote. It’s helpful to take the polling card but this doesn’t count as ID).
Here are three positive reasons I hope you’ll vote for me as your Lib Dem county councillor in Leckhampton & Warden Hill:
I grew up here and I’ve known Leckhampton & Warden Hill all my life. My local shops growing up were in Salisbury Avenue. My favourite walks were through Leckhampton’s green fields. This area has always mattered to me. As your MP and then as a local councillor I have argued successfully for more affordable and climate-friendly housing alongside the protection of our most precious green spaces, I’ve worked hard on local issues from anti-social behaviour to air quality to safer routes to school.
We need better roads and pavements. Most of the complaints I get as a councillor are actually about county council responsibilities like our roads and pavements. 20 years of Conservative administration at Shire Hall has left them in a state that looks terrible, damages cars and is downright dangerous for cyclists and pedestrians. We need change.
I’ll always back nature-friendly solutions. Other parties call themselves green but I’ve actually delivered a clean air plan for Cheltenham, won funding and developer commitments for renewable energy and moved the motion on Cheltenham Borough Council that declared a nature emergency, committing the council to nature recovery, future protection of local green spaces and natural flood risk management such as uphill planting – particularly important to low-lying areas of Warden Hill.
Martin is currently working with local residents to protect Daisy Bank for future generations. The lower field has been put up for sale by its owners
And I’ll always keep in touch all year round with Focus just as I do in Leckhampton already and Tony and Graham do in Warden Hill.
The future of our councils
In this election, you’ll also hear about councils merging or being “split in half”. Here’s what’s going on:
Labour ministers have launched a top-down reorganisation of local government in England. They want more regional authorities headed by elected mayors like London’s and Manchester’s that can take some government powers and spending down to a regional level. Here the most likely ‘strategic authority’ is a West of England authority combining Bristol, Bath and parts of Somerset and all of historic Gloucestershire including Cheltenham, Gloucester, Stroud, Cirencester, the Forest of Dean and South Gloucestershire.
So far so good. But ministers also said they only want one tier of ‘principal council’ below these regional mayoral authorities and we currently have two:
A county council that runs major services like social care, roads and transport and education (Gloucestershire County Council)
District councils that run more local services like planning permission, recycling collection, parks and gardens and arts and culture (Cheltenham and five other districts Gloucester, Tewkesbury, Forest of Dean, Cotswold and Stroud).
So we’ll have to choose what kind of one ‘unitary council’ we want here. The Conservatives want to absorb all seven districts into one giant super-county-council. So even local planning decisions about Leckhampton and Warden Hill, about Cheltenham’s Municipal Offices and Cav and our local green spaces could be taken by councillors with no connection to Cheltenham at all. Our festivals and art gallery and Pump Room and our grants to the Everyman and local good causes would be lumped in with budgets covering Gloucester and the Forest too.
Do we really want the authority that’s been running our roads and pavements running everything? The authority that has messed up the paving on the Prom, whose children’s services were judged ‘inadequate’ and whose transport team thought the Shurdington Road could cope with even more traffic?
Lib Dems don’t. We don’t believe bigger is always better. We want the new councils to have a more local connection, merging three districts each to form a Cheltenham & the Cotswolds council in the east and a Gloucester, Forest & Stroud Valleys council in the west. That will retain at least some of the local links we value so much in our elected decision-makers.
Whatever the pattern of new local councils that emerges from all this, it’s important to have a strong voice speaking up for Leckhampton and for Warden Hill. That’s why I’d be very grateful for your support on 1 May. The polls will be open from 7am to 10pm. It’s helpful to take your official poll card and essential to take PhotoID such as a driver’s licence or passport. Call 01242 262626 and ask for ‘election services’ if you haven’t received a poll card or if you want a postal or proxy vote.
Julia Chandler and Martin Horwood are Leckhampton’s two borough councillors now
Julia and Martin elected in Leckhampton
Lib Dems top the poll across Cheltenham
Lib Dems overtake Conservatives as the second party of local government across England
Julia Chandler has been elected as the second Lib Dem borough councillor for Leckhampton. I was also re-elected and we’d both like to say a huge thank you to everyone who supported us and to everyone else who took part in the election. We’ll do our absolute best to represent you all.
This is the first time both Leckhampton seats have been held by Liberal Democrats. Julia’s win was one of five gains by Lib Dems from the Conservatives across Cheltenham, leaving the Conservative Party with no councillors and the Lib Dems with 36. The Green Party also one won seat from the Conservatives, and Lib Dems and Green Party won and lost one seat each to the other, making the Green Party the official opposition with three seats. The last seat on the council was held by the local party People Against Bureaucracy.
Lib Dem parliamentary candidate Max Wilkinson welcomed the results which make him the hot bet to replace Tory minister Alex Chalk as Cheltenham MP when the Conservatives call the general election. Mr Chalk has voted consistently as instructed by Conservative whips in parliament – 900 times in a row in this parliament! – supporting Boris Johnson on key Brexit, sewage and sleaze votes, Suella Braverman on the Rwanda deportation policy and more recently Rishi Sunak on his reversal of key environmental policies.*
Max is the hot tip to be the next MP for Cheltenham
Across England, the Lib Dems gained over a hundred local government seats, overtaking the Conservatives as the second party of local government.
You can look at Alex Chalk MP’s full voting record on the independent website Public Whip here. The sleaze vote was cast on 3 November 2021 when Alex Chalk voted to support Boris Johnson when he tried to park a parliamentary standards report and save disgraced Tory MP Owen Patterson who had committed an “egregious” breach of lobbying rules while earning £100,000 from private firms. He loyally backed Boris again in the key vote on sewage on 20 October 2021, defeating an amendment that would have curtailed sewage dumping by water companies.
Julia Chandler and myself are the local candidates in Leckhampton
Ex-Super Martin Surl is the candidate for Police & Crime Commissioner
Don’t forget to take Photo ID this time!
Julia and I are standing in the double-header local election here on Thursday 2 May. It’s expected to be another close race between the Lib Dems and the Conservative candidates. No other party has ever won in Leckhampton.
Like me, Julia lives in Leckhampton and has a strong track record of working for local people.
She worked in Cheltenham as a community midwife and campaigned tirelessly for local NHS services with the Royal College of Midwives. She’ll be an expert voice on the council at a time when local health services face unprecedented pressure.
I’ve already been your councillor for six years, winning funds for renewables, bringing in air quality and nature recovery policies at borough level, championing Leckhampton’s green spaces and insisting that when new development does take place, it should be low carbon with a decent proportion of affordable homes.
Julia and I both live locally and use local facilities so we understand local issues and know what’s going on in our community. Pictured here (with best friends Harley & Nancy) at Burrow’s Field.
Julia and I will fight for new projects like the scout hut rebuild and keep campaigning for safer walking and cycling routes like a new zebra crossing on Church Road. And we’ll keep nagging Conservative-run Shire Hall for better roads and pavements.
And we’ll keep in touch all year round not just at election time!
You’ll have another vote on Thursday too – for Gloucestershire’s Police & Crime Commissioner. The Lib Dem candidate is Martin Surl who recently visited Leckhampton with Julia and myself. Leckhampton’s crime rate is well below average but we all know it happens and Martin’s slogan is ‘Every Crime Matters’. As a former superintendent and the former independent Police & Crime Commissioner, Martin knows what he’s talking about: “The last decade has been tough for policing with budgets and officers and staff cut right to the bone. But during my time in office, we were always praised for financial stability. In the last few years that has been put at risk. Under my watch I pledge to make sure our police concentrate on the primary focus of keeping us safe – by making sure every crime matters because every victim matters.” Martin has already got up to speed with the recent increase in anti-social behaviour incidents at Burrow’s Field, the most serious of which resulted in the death of a much-loved little dog.
The polls are open from 7am until 10pm and this time you will need Photo ID to vote. To check where to vote and what Photo ID you can take go to https://www.cheltenham.gov.uk/elections2024
I’d like to wish everyone in Leckhampton a very Merry Christmas and a Happy and Peaceful New Year. If you’re celebrating Hannukah or any other festival at this time of year, best wishes to you too!
You can take part in our 2023 FOCUS Holiday Quiz by following this link.
And here are a few charities local to Leckhampton you might want to think about supporting at this generous time of year if you have a little to spare:
Sue Ryder Carerun wonderful hospice and palliative care at Leckhampton Court. Call 01242 246285 or email them at leckhampton.fundraising@sueryder.org to donate or see how you can fundraise for them.
ITSA Digital Trust in Mead Road (opposite Travis Perkins) recycles old IT kit for African schools and tackles digital exclusion at home. Call in with donated IT equipment or donate via the website.
Gloucestershire Wildlife Trustrun Crickley Hill nature reserve and fight for wildlife and nature recovery all over the county. You can donate at Crickley Hill or via the website, where there’s also an online shop.
Leckhampton Village Hall They already run a successful & much-loved community venue but Leckhampton Village Hall volunteers are on a mission to raise £5000 to help get their project going to build new cloakrooms, provide better disabled access, convert the existing cloakrooms into storage and changing rooms and modernise the hall’s kitchen. You can help by buying a brick for £25 on their JustGiving page – use the QR code or go to https://bit.ly/LVHbrick.
The Leckhampton Road store is going to move to the corner of Pilley Lane a little further up the Leckhampton Road – the former John Wilkins garage site. This follows a unanimous vote by Cheltenham’s planning committee. Most local people have welcomed the idea of the move.
Martin spoke at the meeting and explained the concerns that nearby residents had about the design and sheer scale of the planned three-storey building. It’s not ideal but on balance Martin backed the plan which also incorporates 14 new homes. There was no guarantee that if the plan was rejected the Co-Op move would have happened at all and something even less appropriate might then have been proposed.
On the positive side:
This means the Co-Op can leave its present site which is plagued by pavement parking and awkward shared access next to a busy roundabout. The new plan separates customer parking, pedestrian access and a loading bay for deliveries.
The 14 new homes -2 semi-detached houses and 12 flats – will include some of the most affordable in the area and better use of brownfield sites for housing always helps us to make the case for the defence of our green fields
The switch from a barren garage site to one with planting on two sides will actually represent a significant increase in biodiversity. And none of the new homes will be connected to the gas grid – they’ll all benefit from solar panels and air source heat pumps.
The new buildings will be further from neighbouring properties than the current garage buildings – because they’ll be separated by the residents’ and customer car park.
Martin demands change to whole planning system to restore local decision-making and properly value ecology
An unelected government inspector has decided that Redrow Homes can build 30 more houses in Leckhampton on top of the 377 they are already building, on a site of containing two nationally protected ancient orchards and right in front of iconic views from the AONB at Leckhampton Hill. The site is at the corner of Farm Lane and Church Road, opposite the Crippetts.
Incredibly the inspector’s report acknowledges that the development will harm a valued landscape and break multiple planning policies but then concludes it should still go ahead. The rationale is the shortfall in Cheltenham’s five-year supply of housing despite the fact that Redrow themselves are already building 377 homes next door, Kendrick and Newland Homes have been given permission for more than 30 more nearby and the agreed local plan anticipates a further 350 next to the Shurdington Road.
The Redrow scheme was opposed by the parish and borough councils, the AONB Management Board and hundreds of local residents and rejected by Cheltenham planners but taken to appeal by the developer.
Martin said “This decision represents everything that is wrong with our planning system. An unelected inspector has overturned not only local wishes but local policy at every level from the Cheltenham, Gloucester and Tewkesbury Joint Core Strategy to the Neighbourhood Plan. This is a hugely important site ecologically with two nationally protected orchards in a recognised valued landscape and multiple designations by our Local Nature Partnership. The inspector acknowledged all this, agreed that the development will harm the landscape and that it breaks local policy but has given permission anyway.”
“The inspector says the need for houses trumps everything but Leckhampton is already looking at the best part of a thousand new homes – more than anywhere else in Cheltenham and including hundreds of affordable homes. We’re doing more than anyone to meet housing need but that seems to count for nothing.”
The housing land supply shortage in Cheltenham is largely because of the failure of developers and transport planners to bring forward large promised developments west and north-west of Cheltenham, heavily influenced by factors outside of local councillors’ control like the pandemic and the delayed delivery of improvements to Junction 10 of the M5.
Martin added: “We need to urgently change planning law to restore local decision-making to its proper place, properly value ecology and biodiversity and stop using impossible housing land supply targets to ride roughshod over local plans and the environment.”
Key ponts from the inspector’s report:
Para 6: the inspector acknowledges that the development would be contrary to local spatial strategy (the Cheltenham, Gloucester and Tewkesbury Joint Core Strategy) and national planning guidance
Para 16: The inspector accepts that the site forms part of a ‘valued landscape’ – an important protection in national planning guidance.
Para 19: The inspector acknowledges that the development would harm the character and appearance of the countryside
Para 29: The inspector concludes the development would not harm the landscape and setting of the nearby Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB)
Paras 32-34 The inspector acknowledges the recognised ecological importance of the site in law and local policy
Para 44 The inspector concludes the impact on biodiversity is ‘not unacceptable’
Para 60 The inspector concludes that the ‘pressing and urgent’ need for housing trumps the valued landscape, applying the so-called ’tilted balance’
Para 63 The inspector acknowledges that Leckhampton is already seeing a great deal of new housing but dismisses this as a reason to reject the permission
Local Lib Dems were quick off the mark campaigning to save our bus service. Martin with Warden Hill councillor Graham Beale and Lib Dem parliamentary candidate for Cheltenham, Max Wilkinson, widely tipped to be Cheltenham’s next MP. Photo by Anna Lythgoe.
Last autumn local people were horrified to hear that Leckhampton’s regular regular local bus service – the F bus – was soon to be lost. Its operator Marchants, who had struggled for some time to deliver a reliable service, notified Conservative county transport bosses on 17 August that they were pulling out. But Shire Hall were caught asleep at the wheel and didn’t begin ‘formal market engagement’ on a new service until 14 October blaming Stagecoach for the delay.
Lib Dem parliamentary candidate Max Wilkinson, widely tipped to be Cheltenham’s next MP, was quick off the mark supporting Martin and other Lib Dem councillors in their campaigns to save services as soon as the news became public in October. In the end the county subsidised Marchants to run an ’emergency’ replacement L bus service just in time. It is only 16 buses a day not 24. The L bus route is shown below.
The new replacement L bus service will last at least until November 2023 and for now it’s free. But enjoy that while it lasts: fares will be back soon.
It was unclear then how long this would last, especially as no fares are being charged so far, and whether the weekend F bus, scheduled to end this month, would also be replaced. Now Shire Hall have confirmed to Martin that a weekend service with “similar coverage” to the L bus will replace the F and that the contract with Marchants runs at least until November 2023.
Sadly, the freebies are coming to an end though with fares coming as soon as the proper equipment can be fitted to Marchant’s buses.
Martin said ‘This is good news for now and we have time to campaign for a permanent reliable local service now.’
‘In the face of climate change, growing awareness of air pollution and rising fuel costs we should be doing everything possible to encourage and grow public transport. But Conservative leaders at Shire Hall seem to be lurching trom crisis to crisis and presiding over reduced services instead.’
